by Jon Western | 27 Oct 2009 |
The first oil contract with the Iraqi government goes to China's CNPC and they are not hiring local labor. From the BBC: "Left Behind By Iraq's Oil Rush on why the locals are not getting jobs:There were hopes too, when the Chinese company first arrived, of an employment bonanza."We thought everyone will find a job," said Zahi, a village elder.So far, they have taken on just a handful of al-Mazzagh's residents as guards.But the CNPC says there...
by Jon Western | 26 Oct 2009 | Featured
Radovan Karadzic, the leader of wartime Bosnian Serbs, was a no show today at the opening of his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia. He's planning to defend himself against eleven counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities. The reason for his no-show? One of his legal advisors told the BBC that from the scope of the trial - thought to include 1.2 million pages of evidence, numerous crime...
by Jon Western | 23 Oct 2009 |
As Charli pointed out a while ago, I co-authored a piece in the current issue of Foreign Affairs on the backward slide in Bosnia over the past three years. My co-author, Patrice McMahon, and I noted that the institutions created by the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995 successfully ended the war, but created a decentralized duel-entity political system based on ethnic quotas and divisions that are now contributing to the current crisis. For the...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Oct 2009 |
Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann published an analysis at the New America Foundation a couple of days ago on civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan. Key points from the callout on the site: "The Obama administration has dramatically ratcheted up the American drone program in Pakistan. Since President Obama took office, U.S. drone strikes have killed about a half-dozen militant leaders along with hundreds of others, a quarter of whom...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Oct 2009 |
No joke.
by Laura Sjoberg | 22 Oct 2009 | Featured
The Special Rapporteur's report on "Protecting Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism" is making headlines for something other than countering terrorism - for (gasp) what CNSnews.com reporter Adam Brickley calls "a radical definition of gender" which he notes the UN General Assembly has already rejected several times, and implies is dangerous to global social and political organization. Others have decried the...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Oct 2009 |
Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein lit a fire under human rights activists yesterday with his NYTimes op-ed yesterday, criticizing the organization for its focus on Israel rather than more autocratic regimes in the Middle East.His argument is really about organizational mandate and issue selection: faced with the need to select among the many abuses competing for intention, how should a group like Human Rights Watch prioritize its...
by Jon Western | 19 Oct 2009 |
Could Afghanistan get any messier? I'd like to have anyone advocating McChrystal's recommendations explain to me how this would work... From the New York Times "Audit Said Likely to Show Karzai has 48 Percent of Vote":Mr. Karzai’s campaign officials have complained about the work of the five-member panel, saying that foreigners were unfairly influencing its outcome. And Mr. Karzai himself indicated this weekend that he might oppose the results,...
by Charli Carpenter | 19 Oct 2009 |
Much was made over the weekend of 14 gang deaths in Rio, host of the 2016 Olympics, forcing Brazil onto the defensive. I wonder if the same attention would have been given to the following news story from last week, had Chicago won the bid:Community activists said the recent murder of a Fenger High School honor student exposes a problem many teens face every day: safe passage to and from school. “I wonder how many more teens will be murdered...
by Charli Carpenter | 16 Oct 2009 |
... but for the fact that, though security specialists can theorize the millitarization of cyberspace they cannot manage to provide wireless access at their otherwise excellent academic conferences.Will my IPhone be sufficient to the task? Stay tuned.8:25 am PST: Geostrategy and Post-Arctic World panel, James Manicom draws interesting links between nationalism and EEZs. Offshore territorial disputes in the Arctic & Spratlys are less about...
by Jon Western | 16 Oct 2009 |
There has been a lot of criticism of President Obama's decision making style in the last couple of weeks. Last week, Dan Balz had this description: The president, according to one official, came to last week's meeting with his top advisers armed with a list of questions, carefully written down in his precise handwriting, that were designed to generate a thorough airing of the choices available and the underlying analysis behind them.So far so...
by Charli Carpenter | 15 Oct 2009 |
Cleitus the Black has left a long comment in the thread about my Georgia War report commentary that requires a response longer than I can give there. (For someone who appears to be on permanent hiatus from his/her own blog, CTB certainly seem to find time to leave lengthy dissertations in comments on other people's...)CTB asks:"What is the international standard for an 'acceptable' number of Russian (or American, etc) citizens living in a...